


Joker and the Thief

by hanschen



Category: Jackass (Movies) RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 07:27:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23347660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanschen/pseuds/hanschen
Summary: I'll tell you all the story 'bout the joker and the thief in the night.They would do anything to not have to go home.(Ehren & Dave centric, post-June 2011)
Kudos: 6





	Joker and the Thief

“Dange!”

Neither Dave nor Ehren’s friends seemed particularly thrilled with Dave’s imminent approaching. But if you broke it down, what part of Dave England was there for a bunch of bikers to appreciate? A skinny skater boy with blonde hair, blue eyes, a tan, and an attitude problem. He somehow had this permanent label of “skater boy” despite being past forty. Frankly, there wasn’t much there for anyone to appreciate. But Dave had a wife and plenty of friends and statistically, he had to have some fangirls. Still, Ehren was painfully aware of his friends muttering cynically when Dave called out. He was also aware of how it cut off the second Dave was within three feet of the table.

“You didn’t respond to ‘homo’.”

Ehren ignored the looks from his table – silently judging his career choice, sexuality, and taste in friends all in one – and got up to give Dave a man-hug. “Hey, man. How was your flight?”

“I threw up. I still kind of feel like I have to.” He sat at the table, awkwardly between Ehren and some guy with a scowl and a mustache. Dave nodded at his new neighbor and the others. “Hey, what’s up. I’m Dave.” He looked around at their beers, pulled aside a random waitress, and asked for a beer, despite just mentioning puking. Then he turned his attention back to the table. He noticed the silence with a start. “Uh-oh. Is there something on my face?”

“I think we just don’t know how to talk to you,” said a middle-aged woman with nice auburn hair, a black tank top, and fit arms. She shook his head. “My name’s Jane. We’re not used to meeting any of Ehren’s buddies from Jackass.”

“I’m not used to meeting any of Ehren’s friends because…” His open-mouthed smirk didn’t leave his face when he trailed off. Ehren sensed Dave’s desire to make a joke about how Ehren had no friends, but thankfully Dave was smart enough to realize when he had to work to win over a crowd. “Are you guys, like, all bikers too?”

There were murmurs of affirmation. Dave’s beer came. The mustache guy started rambling to Dave about how they met at some sort of outdoor lesson, and the entire time Dave just smiled at him very similar to the way adults smile at children explaining how old they were or which toy were their favorites. 

Ehren was growing uncomfortable at an exponential rate. He predicted Dave was finding the idea of Ehren taking motorcycle lessons on Saturday mornings to be very amusing. Eventually that conversation came to a lull, and a young man with skin darker than his hair and a chiseled jaw said to Dave, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Dave looked straight at him. “What?”

Ehren shot Dave a look. Dave returned it. “When are we leaving?”

“I think we’re heading out,” Ehren announced to his group.

* * *

“I thought you only drive motorcycles now or something.”

“Well, I do some of that, but…” Ehren gritted his teeth as his old two-door car whirred, showing few signs of life. He kept turning the key, his face matching the toothy skull keychain he had. “Fuck, start, you stupid shit piece of shit car shit fuck shit car dammit…”

Dave was continuously looking between Ehren and the dashboard. “You make swearing sound like a voodoo chant.” The car came to life. “Maybe it is! Ehren, you’re magic. You have voodoo magic deep within you. Oh well, I guess you need something. Does this light up?” Dave reached for the skull key chain and squealed when Ehren hit his hand away.

“Yeah, see, there’s a button…” Ehren grinned when the skull’s eyes lit up and it emitted some sort of evil laughter. He took his hand away and it stopped.

“I like how you won’t let me press the button. Like, YOU need to press it. As you turn onto a major road.”

“It’s midnight. We’re in the middle of Oregon. There’s no one coming.” 

“So yeah, where’s the motorcycle? I actually kind of wanted to ride it.”

“At home. I didn’t think you’d want me to drive you around on it after an evening flight or whatever. Why? You wanted to ride on back of it with me? Wrap your legs around me? You wanted that, didn’t you, Dave?”

“Shut your mouth. I just want that keychain. It’s so creepy.” Without getting smacked, he reached over and pushed the button, holding it down for a good fifteen seconds. “It’s creepier when it stops. It’s just like laughing and lighting up and then it just stops. Why do I like this so much?” He pressed it again. Then, as if he just realized it, “Ohmygod, some of your friends are such assholes.”

“Because you’re like, NOT an asshole, right?”

“But I mean, they’re weird. Not in a good way. Do you go biking with those people or what?”

“Yeah!”

“Ew, Ehren. Jesus.” He paused. “So I’m crashing at your house for tonight, then we go to West Chester together, right?”

“Right.”

“I mean, what an asshole. That one- just everyone. That bar was so like-“

“That one who?”

“Never mind. I’m just saying all of them-“

“That one guy with the mustache?”

“What? No. Never mind. Just drive.”

They hit the first stop light at the empty intersection. Ehren turned to look at Dave, but Dave kept his eyes glued to the barren darkness on the street in front of him. “Oh no, Dave. Do you mean the guy who said he was sorry for your loss? He was just being polite. He meant it about-“

“Yeah, I know WHO he meant, duh. It’s none of his business. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Look, that’s Mike. He’s fine, okay? He was just saying sorry.”

Dave mumbled, “What’s he have to be sorry about…”

“Same thing that everyone else who-“

“I don’t want to talk about it, Ehren, stop! Crap. Sorry I didn’t want to talk to him about it either.”

Ehren sighed. They drove past a couple strip malls in silence, then past a small field. They drove past a few side streets of various duplexes, many of them with some sort of decaying truck in the front. Dave fidgeted. “You don’t live here, do you?”

“No, I live in a decent place, I promise. We’re not there yet-”

“Hold up! Stop! What is that? Is that an abandoned playground?”

“What?” Ehren had driven on the outskirts of this low-income neighborhood and he didn’t remember ever seeing a playground; then again, he was never looking. 

“It totally is! How creepy! Dude, wait, pull over. This is so creepy. Let’s trespass.”

Ehren made some sort of illegal turn and pulled into the parking lot in front of the chain link fence. “It’s not abandoned, dumbass. There’s just no one here. Why did you think it would be abandoned?”

“I don’t know, I guess I’ve just never seen a playground at night.”

“I just haven’t been to one in years.”

“I went to one the other day with Johanna and the kids. Thursday, we went to a really nice one. This one’s kinda shitty.” He led the way into the playground. There was a creaky chain link gate with no lock.

“Look at that slide. Holy shit! You remember slides?”

Dave snickered. “Yeah, I remember slides from Thursday.” He rubbed the plastic. “I remember I used to spend way more time running up them then sliding down. I think I got into a real fight with another kid. He was going down and I was going up. Neither of us wanted to move.”

“You were even an asshole as a toddler!”

“So true,” Dave jumped onto the bottom of the slide. He crouched on all fours and clambered up. It was a sizeable slide, but being an adult, it took two seconds. Pokerfaced, he stood at the top, turned around and slid down. “Lame.” Dave sighed and ran back up.

Ehren stood at the bottom of the slide. He pointed and laughed at Dave’s sour face.

“Move, Ehren! I’ll ram you. I’ll ram you right the off of this slide. Swear it.”

“You’ll just get hurt, too.”

“Move it! I’m sliding down.”

“Maybe I want to climb up.”

“Ha. Ha ha ha. I get it, Ehren. Five year old me. Seriously, move. I want to slide down.”

Ehren crossed his arms and bared his crooked teeth. Crooked, largely thanks to Dave and their mini-bikes. Or so he liked to think. Maybe it was just as easy to blame Dave for the crooked teeth as anyone else.

“Ehren!!” Dave gave Ehren a few more seconds to move. He didn’t. Dave bit his lip and gave himself a mighty shove down the slide, barreling into Ehren’s legs. They both crashed off the bottom of the slide, in a shapeless pile, groaning in pain. Dave crawled away. “That’s not what I thought would happen.”

“What did you think would happen, assface?”

“I thought it would be cartoony, like I crash into you and I’m safe and you just go flying.”

“… Sounds logical!!”

“Shut up!” Dave pushed himself up, rubbing his shoulder. He made his way towards a tire swing and climbed in it. It was plain to see that there was no way he was picking up speed by himself, but Ehren decided to watch Dave struggle with that idea first. He watched the back of Dave’s blue windbreaker and blonde hair wiggle as he writhed back in forth in the tire swing. “Fuck!” He kicked his legs about. This only resulted in him nearly falling off. His pants dropped and his purple boxers showed.

Ehren pointed and laughed, even though he was suddenly aware that no one was around to laugh with him. “Nice purple shorts! Your buttcrack is showing too!”

“Can you push me?”

“There are regular swings over there. Go on those, then you can do it yourself. And you won’t need me to push you.” 

As Dave struggled out of the tire swing, making vaguely monkey-like noises, Ehren sat on a swing. _Holy shit. It’s been years. I don’t even really remember how to do this. What’s the trick?_ He pushed himself a bit with his legs. _Oh. That’s it._ Dave plopped on the swing beside him. Without pausing, Dave began swinging and picking up speed, and Ehren felt a tiny surge of jealousy. Then he remembered that Dave probably knew how to swing because he had kids, and he didn’t feel jealous anymore. “Hey, Dave. When you go on trips, do you like, miss your kids and stuff?”

“Yeah, sometimes.”

“What’s it like having kids?” Ehren was getting some height on the swing too. He felt better about himself.

“Busy. Better than you probably think. Actually rewarding – that’s not all a bunch of bullcrap.”

Then for a few minutes, it was just Dave and Ehren swinging side by side in silence. The swing set creaked under their weight. 

“Should I jump off?” Ehren asked.

“Yeah!!”

“Wait, if I don’t land it, I’ll fucking kill myself…”

“JUMP!”

Ehren just swung about.

“JUMP, EHREN, JUMP!”

Ehren scratched his feet in the dirt, preparing to stop. “Nah, dude, I can’t fuck up my legs or something before we go to West Chester. That’d blow.”

“…Pussy…” Dave swung back and forth twice more, then jumped off. He landed with surprising grace, then sort of stumbled on to all fours. “Ow. I guess I was higher up than I thought.”

Ehren slowed to a stop. “That was awesome.”

Dave, blue eyes fixed on nothing, walked back over to his swing. He had a slight limp.

“Did you hurt your ankle or what?”

Dave plopped down on the seat. He kept staring.

“… Dave?”

“Yeah?”

“Your ankle or-“

Dave leaned over and vomited on the dirty, leaf-covered ground. Ehren couldn’t help giving one shout of fear. It echoed in the quiet dark of the night.

Dave looked up after a seconds of spitting, finally acknowledging Ehren. “Don’t freak out, man. I must have eaten something bad at the airport. That’s like the third time I puked today.”

Ehren felt a familiar wave of humiliation wash over him. “No, that was pretty retarded of me. To get scared just because you hurled. Like I haven’t ever seen someone puke before.”

Dave closed his eyes and leaned on the chain of the swing, but laughed. “After we’re grown men swinging on these old fucking rusty… creaky… things.”

“We’re grown men on a playground.”

“In the middle of the night.”

“And we don’t really have real jobs.”

“We just get hurt all the fuckin’ time and people film it!” Dave laughed harder, grabbing the chains of the swing, bobbing side to side. 

“And they put it on MTV for fuck’s sake!”

“And then we made movies!”

“Three of them!” they said in unison, giggling like schoolboys, like they never had before, at something other than hurting each other. 

Dave continued, obviously thinking this whole bit was the funniest joke he had ever heard. (He was definitely sick.) “And we do it with these other crazy guys, and we try to seem as, um, as not-gay as possible even though we’re always naked around each other!”

“And we made a movie in 3D!”

“And one of our guys is this crazy vegan ex-druggie ex-clown!”

“And another one of them is obese.”

“And another is a midget.”

“And another is this guitar-playing, long-haired guy who dances in a thong and calls himself Party Boy!”

“And another is this bratty kid from Pennsylvania who has his own show for beating up his dad!”

They were both laughing so hard they were almost falling off the creaky swings, but just like that, their laughing slowed. Then stopped. They were surrounded by that dark quiet again. It was better than filling that gap. But Ehren was made even more nervous by the gap. _Why are we avoiding this? We tweet about it. We give interviews about it. But I can’t even talk about it?_

Ehren rolled down the faded black sleeves of his jacket. “How do you feel about, uh, going to West Chester?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Pointedly, “Ugh.”

Dave shot him a piercing look. “How am I supposed to feel about it?”

“I don’t know! You don’t need to feel any one way, dude. Maybe you had something interesting to say about it.”

“Why do I need something interesting to say about it? Frankly, it’s NOT actually very interesting. Everyone has said everything they need to. Everyone has said shit they DON’T need to. I’m sick of saying shit. I feel like I HAVE to say shit. Well, maybe I’m done saying shit. I’m done.” The rusty chains of his swing were shaking. “That’s why I didn’t want to talk about it, Ehren. I told you I didn’t want to. I’m sick of talking about it. Sick of it. Why the fuck did you have to ask about it?”

“Because no one’s said anything I want to hear yet!!” It echoed.

Dave stared at the leaves. He stared at his own puke. Just the whole ground. “What do you want people to say about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“… What do _you_ want to say about it?”

“Nothing interesting.” They both stared at the ground. Ehren focused on the marks his feet left when he scraped them to slow down his swing. Dave walked a few feet away to an old, dangerous-looking playground carousel. He pushed it with his hand. It creaked as it gave a bit of turn. Dave waited for it to stop and weakly sat down on the edge of it. “I’m sad now. And I kind of want to puke again. Can we go to your apartment?”

“I know what I want them to say about it, actually.”

Dave heaved a huge sigh. “What do you want them to say about it?”

“I want them to say it was a mistake.”

Dave said nothing to that.

“I want someone to tell me that it was a one-time mistake. A complete fluke and, and, and a really rare error. And it’s - I don’t know - getting fixed. And that it’s just a- a bug or something and it’s never going to happen again.”

Dave’s blue eyes looked ready to pop out of his head, but Ehren couldn’t stop it. He was standing from the swing now. 

“I want someone to promise me, somehow, that that shit will never happen to me-“

“Ehren…”

“I want someone to tell me that… that’s not how I’m going to go down!”

“ _EHREN!_ ” It was Dave’s turn to echo.

Ehren’s hands were shaking. “I just don’t want that shit to happen to me! And I want someone to be able to tell me that nothing’s going to happen to me, but we’re from FUCKING JACKASS, so no one ever thinks we need to hear that! But I do! I fucking do!” Ehren could have continued, but Dave threw himself on the leafy ground in front of the carousel. He didn’t scream, and he didn’t curl up into the fetal position, and he didn’t writhe around like he was in physical pain, he just sat up on the ground and covered his ears, glaring at the darkness, clearly fighting back tears. And doing a poor job of it. 

And for the second time that night, Ehren felt ridiculous. Obviously, his friend, the only one he had that night who he could really relate to, was upset. And what did he do? _You made him cry. And you probably made him puke._

After a minute, Dave realized Ehren was done talking and lowered his hands. 

“Do you want to go to my apartment now?”

Dave nodded and got up. They walked toward the chain link gate. Ehren pulled out his car keys and the skull key chain. He saw Dave give it a long glance. “Oh, hey. I was wondering. You want this stupid little thing?” Ehren held up the key and chain. 

“The skull?” Dave resisted an immediate smile, but his eyes and their blue seemed to glow. “I mean, if you don’t want it.”

Ehren unclipped it and handed it to Dave. Before he could fight it, a wide, toothy grin spread over Dave’s face. Dave grasped the skull in his hand, then pressed the button. Its eyes glowed red and it laughed and growled at them. Dave kept grinning at it. He held down the button for too long, released it, and pressed it again.

After another minute of this, Ehren opened the gate and they walked back towards Ehren’s old car. The toy skull’s evil laughter stopped. Dave stopped short in front of the car.

“Hey, it won’t laugh at me anymore.”

“That’s weird.”

“His eyes are glowing, though.”

“’His’?” Ehren snickered. “What if it’s a girl skull?”

Dave didn’t even smile at that. He kept pressing the button. “Now it won’t even glow for me.”

Ehren didn’t move from his frozen position in front of the car. “What? Really?”

“… He broke.”

Ehren reached up to run a hand through his sparse, ruined black hair. “… Uh…”

Dave looked away. They both got in the car.

“I’ll give you a new one. There are some around here. Maybe in the airport.” He willed the car to start. It just sort of gurgled in response. “I have some more, actually, maybe in a junk drawer or some shit.”

Intense blue focused on Ehren. “If I need to puke, will you pull over?”

“Sure. Do you promise to tell me so you won’t puke in my car?”

“I promise.”

“Thanks. That’s all I need to hear.”


End file.
